Debates are often characterised by the extent to which they generate light or heat.
But the heat is all about light in the great dress debate. After two Scottish friends sought the wisdom of Twitter and Facebook in a disagreement the colour of a wedding frock a kind of collective obsession swept the internet over the colour of a dress.
This is only partly a question of the way the dress is lit. The fascination lies in the fact that friends, relatives, workmates, and of course the inevitably celebrities apparently see something different when they look at the same picture.
In one respect this is trivial, of course, compared with the other issues of the day. Whether the dress is blue and black or gold and white scarcely matters. But it is remarkable for the unsettling questions it raises. If you see a simple photograph of a dress quite differently from the person sitting next to you, it makes you wonder what other faulty assumptions you are making.
On one level this is a question of how light falls on cones and rods, and how the individual brain processes that, but thrillingly, this debate shows our neighbours may be more different from us than we realise.
It also satisfies a need for shared conversations, which seem to be ever harder to find in our increasingly fragmented cultural landscape.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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